Looking for a small drone for indoor use and proper stabilisation even in low light conditions.

[Gaspar]

Hi there,
I don't have much experience with drones. As the title says, I'm "looking for a small drone for indoor use and proper stabilisation even in low light conditions" to be used for a dance performance inside a theatre. The drone is meant to be manually steered.

I bought the DJI neo since it was small (proper size) and advertised (somewhere) as usable for indoors. Later in the manual and elsewhere it states it is designed for outdoors.
The drone works reasonably well, even indoors, provided you have good light conditions and proper structured floor.
However I'm facing serious problems inside theatres.

• Most often I have no satellites on the GPS.
• I would like to have relatively dark scenes
• The dancefloor is homogeneous black (sometimes white or grey).

Under these circumstances, the DJI neo often enters in ATTI mode, which is still "kind of" fine. But sometimes it just looses responsivity and becomes very difficult to control.

Ideally I would use something similar to what Marvelminds offers using beacons. My set up would be quite easy since I could easily place the beacons at the stage corners and the space is mostly smaller than 10 x 10m with no meaningful obstacles.
However, most of those drones are quite bigger than the neo and implementation of the system is not very straight forward. I probably would be able to set it up. But I would love to find somewhat more like "working out of the box", since I will also be running lights, sound and interaction and would not be able to pay too much attention to yet another thing.

What I've tried so far.

• White dance floor. Works ok if dirty and well lit. If very clean or poorly lit the neo can't stabilise on its own.
• Black dance floor, works similar to the white one, but requires more light.
• Attach LED light's below the neo. Did not really improve the situation
• Flood the space with IR light. Did not help. I hoped the IR sensors would "see" enough to work properly and I wouldn't need to use visible light. I might need some further testing for this since I might have used too much light, which is the same as being in the dark, No visual cues.
• Place a lit LED stripe in the horizont. Did not help.

Any suggestions are very welcome.

Just one more thing... I would prefer a drone with propeller guards, since the drone "dances" with a person I don't want to harm and also in case of bumping into something it just would bounce back instead of crashing.

Thank you gals and guys and pilots of any kind ;-)

 

[LoudThunder]

I don't have much experience with drones

I will just say this, you are "Playing with Fire" and that is not a dance routine. Flying any drone in an enclosed space (dance studio) with the dancers moving about, who not only have to watch their step, their partner, the other dancers and now you, especially a newbie who is likely to not have the best control of the drone and doubly especially while flying in low light conditions is dangerous. I hope you have lots and lots of insurance because you will need it.

But if you insist on your pursuit, Please use one of the drones (like the Neo…) whose propellers are well guarded to prevent those propeller from slapping the smiles of the dancer's face…

And remember that when the drone is in ATTI mode (which you said is OK…), even a light breeze from a fan will move that drone from its location and it might make it uncontrollable…